Járn og gúmmí
Kæri járnsmiður,
þú sem skríður hér
milli beðanna
í skugga nýútsprunginna
blóma:
illa má ég
við sjö ára
ógæfu þinni.
Né mátt þú
við allsherjarógæfu
gúmmísólans.
Blacksmith beetle,
you crawl
between garden rows
in newly upsprung
flowers:
I can’t bear
seven years’
of your misfortune.
Neither can you bear
the burden
of rubber soles.
Vatnaskil
Hugarfljótið
hefur skolað mér
á þurrt.
Úr kallfæri.
Undir nýjum
himni.
Og ég sái
í nýjan
akur.
Watershed
A flood of thoughts
has washed me
ashore.
Out of earshot.
Beneath a new
sky.
And now I plant
in an untouched
field.
Dagliljan
Nú glitrar
morgunsólin
í krónu
dagliljunnar.
Hún sem er
í senn
brunnur
sem fyllist
og bikar
sem tæmist
hvern nýjan dag.
Daylilies
The morning sun
glitters
on the crown
of a daylily.
A wellspring
that fills
and a cruet
that empties
each day.
Vetrarhugur
What’s the winter for?
To remember love.
— Theodore Roethke
Það hefur gránað
í fjöll,
og haustvindarnir
æða naprir
milli húsa.
Samt hlakka ég
til komandi vetrar.
Þegar áin streymir
milli skara,
og raddirnar
berast óravegu
í stillunum
milli
okkar tveggja,
í mánuðinum
með járnnafnið.
Þegar orðin eru
einsog kalt stál
og það er málmbragð
milli tanna.
Winter Thoughts
What’s the winter for?
To remember love.
— Theodore Roethke
The mountain
has turned grey,
and autumn winds
whip sharply
between buildings.
Yet I look forward
to the coming winter.
When rivers channel
through border ice
and voices carry
far away
in the stillness,
between
us,
in the months
with iron names
when words are
like cold steel,
and leave a metallic
taste between my teeth.
These poems originally appeared in Cold Moons by Magnús Sigurðsson, translated from the Icelandic by Meg Matich (Phoneme Media, bilingual edition 2017). They are republished by permission of the publisher and poets.
Magnús Sigurdsson’s spare poems pay rare attention to the minute revelations of nature rather than allowing the crudeness of machinery to bulldoze our sentiments. Through intricate wordplay and a titanic understanding of his native Icelandic, rendered with perfect tone by award-winning translator Meg Matich, Sigurdsson creates tiny but arresting artifacts—fragments that scale an instant to an aeon, and a thousand millennia to a second. Whether describing the dwarf wasp’s one-millimeter wingspan or the roots of a bonsai, he is a cosmologist of language, and Cold Moons is an intimate map of his distinctive universe. Learn more.
Meg Matich is a Reykjavik-based poet and translator, and a current Fulbright grantee. Her translations have appeared in or are forthcoming from PEN America, Exchanges, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, Aarhus, and others. In 2015, she received the PEN Heim Translation Fund grant for her translation of Magnús Sigurðsson’s Cold Moons. She has received grants and fellowships from the DAAD, the Banff Centre, the Icelandic Literature Center, Columbia University, and others. She is currently assisting with the 2017 Reykjavik Literary Festival. Cold Moons is her first full-length translation.
Header photo of flowers by Lee_seonghak, courtesy Pixabay.
